All the Myriad Ways
by House Sylveste
Summary: A series of oneshots and short stories set in an AU where Crona develops the ability to use magic.
1. Chapter 1

For Medusa Gorgon, everything was in the process of falling apart.

It was her own damn fault, she thought to herself in that strange, calm, reflective state of mind that overcomes people when such enormous catastrophes occur. It was her own fault for putting all her eggs in one basket without even realising it. She had _thought_ that everything had been going so well. The weapon Ragnarok had been captured and subdued. The latest strain of black blood was performing beyond her wildest dreams. It would be a simple matter to combine the two, and then the work of a night at most to transfuse the resultant mixture into the host.

But that was the problem right there, wasn't it? _The_ host. Not any host would do any more. This new strain of black blood had to be carefully calibrated for maximum effect. It had to be attuned to the recipient, and the recipient in this case would be Crona, her weak, snivelling boy-child that the fates had chosen to grace her with instead of the strong, powerful witch daughter she had begged them for.

And Crona was about two seconds away from getting impaled by a dragon.

Again, it was her own fault. She had tried to get him used to killing even before injecting him with the black blood, to get a head start on his madness. To that end, she'd had him slaughtering small animals for a while now, mostly ugly and vicious things that he ought not to form any emotional attachment to at all (but yet always did, turning every kill into an hour-long melodrama). The dragon pup had been a bit ambitious, but she'd taken the necessary precautions. Its fuel glands had been milked, its claws blunted and its wings broken to render it harmless. Unfortunately, with her head full of the euphoria of the recent successes with the black blood, she'd forgotten about its damn tail.

She had stood on the opposite side of the room from Crona and the dragon, a psychological trick to try and get him used to being on his own in combat. She was certainly regretting that now. Panicking, she sent a storm of vector arrows at the dragon as it swung its tail right at Crona's frail chest. The boy howled in fear and raised a hand in a futile attempt to protect himself. The sword he had been carrying lay on the ground next to him, quite forgotten about in his terror.

The arrowhead-shaped tail pierced Crona's chest and carried right on through him like he was made of tissue paper. Less than a second later Medusa's vector arrows slammed into the dragon, effectively shredding it and leaving little more than a large red stain and a few lumps of meat. But the damage had clearly been done. Crona tottered and fell to his knees, a look of enormous surprise on his five year old face. Slowly, he reached up and pulled the now-severed tail from his body.

Medusa gave a scream of fury. _Months of research, years of planning, a lifetime of work…_ all of it gone. If by some miracle Crona was still alive, she was half-tempted to kill him herself.

And then, shakily, breathing unsteadily, Crona got back to his feet.

For a moment, Medusa was convinced she was going mad. It would not be surprising, considered the dangerous substances she worked with. An accidental exposure to black blood, even uncalibrated, and it would be easy to hallucinate that her son was stood before her instead of bleeding out her hopes and dreams all over the floor. But somehow this just seemed too… too _real_.

She walked over to Crona (not running, no matter how much she wanted to, she wasn't about to fawn over him like some human mother) and placed a hand on his chest. There was no ragged tear in the dress he wore, the one she had bought for the daughter she'd prayed for and never received. No gaping wound. No blood, no hot, raw flesh and cold white bone.

It was as if he had been made of smoke.

It was impossible.

And Medusa smiled a smile that terrified Crona, one that he had never seen before and which he therefore assumed was about to lead to some horrible punishment.

It was a smile of glee.

* * *

_Author's note: I have absolutely no idea where this will head, if it heads anywhere at all. I think the next chapter might go into a bit of detail about Crona's new-found powers, which, if I'm honest, I still need to have a bit of a think about. Still, let me know what you think!_


	2. Chapter 2

A witch's ordination ceremony is widely seen as the most important day in her life, and, for the witch's parent, the most harrowing moment of theirs.

It occurs on the night of All Hallows Eve, when the world of evil magic is at its strongest and the witches celebrate their eternal battle against the forces of Death and order. The witches gather from across the globe to welcome their children into the coven. Each child is brought before the Grandwitch, who assesses it, tests it and finally tells the expectant parent how powerful it is and what kind of magic the young girl will eventually come to specialise in. Once all the children have been ordained they are welcomed into the coven, and the celebrations will begin in earnest. Ancient and powerful families will mix and mingle with new, up-and-coming dynasties, and then the real events of the ceremony will begin. For the ordination ceremony is not just a time to cheer on one's offspring, but also to re-forge old alliances and carefully nurture new ones. Great and far-reaching agreements can be made between families as they sit next to one another, waiting for their daughter to be called into the Grandwitch's quarters. Like everything else in the witching world, there is an undercurrent of politics to the proceedings that an outside observer would fail to recognise.

The Gorgon family used to be one of the 'ancient and powerful' ones, Medusa reflected sullenly as she waited along with several other mothers outside Mabaa's quarters. She remembered that when Shaula had been ordained, she had been the first one the Grandwitch had seen that night. After Arachne and Medusa, the Gorgon family name had been rushed to the top of the list. Now however, both her sisters had disappeared and Mabaa had made it quite clear that she would deal with the _thing_ Medusa had brought with her after she had seen to all the genuine witch children first.

But no matter. Medusa was confident that Crona would show some promise. Since that incident with the dragon more than a year ago she had become more and more convinced that the boy had _some_ ability with magic, even if it was tenuous at best. And that was an achievement in itself.

Eventually, the last of the young girls left and it was Crona's turn to face the Grandwitch. Medusa had dressed him in what a human might call his 'Sunday best' and he automatically straightened out his suit jacket as he stood. She had spent all of last week drilling smart dressing into him – she had no intention of presenting a true child of hers to the witching world as a scruffy thing that wore girl's clothes.

Mabaa gave an ill-disguised sigh of resignation as Crona stood before her, trembling slightly and with his head bowed. Without any real enthusiasm she went through the motions of reading his soul, examining his aura, or whatever it was the Grandwitch did to determine a young witch's magic. Medusa fought to hold back a scowl. She wanted to bellow at the aged witch to take her son seriously, damnit, but she held her tongue.

And then Mabaa gasped.

At the sound of it Crona's head snapped up, clearly terrified that he'd done something wrong. But he kept quiet – his mother had been strict on that. Medusa, meanwhile, was looking at Mabaa's one visible eye with a mix of elation and satisfaction. What little she could see of the Grandwitch's face was twisted in an expression of utter surprise.

"The omens are good," the old witch intoned. Was it Medusa's imagination or was there a slight quaver in that voice? She hoped so.

"A test of the child's magic is now in order," said Mabaa as calmly as she could. The Grandwitch's mind was racing. _Impossible…_ she thought to herself.

This would be the clincher, Medusa knew. Clearly Mabaa had seen something in Crona. _But what?_ To come all this way only to find out that her boy was destined to use something pathetic like healing magic would be almost too much to bear.

With little warning, Mabaa reached under her robes and produced a small pistol. Medusa started at it, trying not to dissolve into fits of laughter. The tiny human weapon looked so utterly ridiculous in the hand of the most powerful witch in the world that for a terrible moment she wondered whether this was all some cruel joke on the elder witch's part. Crona meanwhile gave a small squeak of fear and started to back away from the Grandwitch.

"I think this shall be sufficient," said Mabaa as she levelled the pistol at Crona's chest and pulled the trigger.

* * *

For Crona, everything suddenly became very clear.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. He could see the gun pointed at him. He could see the bullet beginning to emerge from the black hole of the barrel like a monster leaving its cave, surfing a wave of expanding gases as it hurtled slowly towards him. And he knew exactly what was going to happen next: the bullet, propelled by a small explosion in the rear of the gun barrel, would traverse the short distance between him and Mabaa and drill through the skin of his chest. It would keep on going, burrowing through flesh and blood. The expanding shockwave it produced as it did so would wreak havoc on his central nervous system, sending him into shock. Blood vessels would be ruptured far more than they had the capacity to heal themselves. Vital organs, such as his heart or lungs, would be punctured and deformed. The bullet may glance off one of his ribs, in which case it would ricochet around inside of him and do even more damage. Eventually it would exit his body, bursting out of a ragged wound in his back before finally coming to a halt against the stone wall of Mabaa's room.

And he would collapse, in deep shock, bleeding terribly, with only seconds to live even if he was not already dead by the time he hit the floor.

That was what was going to happen in the world where Mabaa shot him. The probability of that happening was as close to certain as made no difference.

But.

There were other worlds too.

And in most of them, the bullet was not where it was right now. Maybe Mabaa had decided not to shoot him after all, or had attacked him with a different weapon, or had missed, or had seen someone else at this time instead of him and therefore had no need to fire a gun in the first place. The nature of it didn't matter. What _did_ matter was that in all of those worlds, the bullet which had now left the gun barrel on the leading edge of a plume of white-hot gas was not doing exactly that. It was _somewhere else_.

Slowly, Crona focused his mind and began to bleed that aspect into the reality he occupied. In one case, the bullet existed along the trajectory it was taking. In ten, fifty, a hundred other cases, it was not.

On average, the bullet was not there at all.

Medusa felt a certain sense of déjà vu as she watched the bullet flicker through Crona's chest, impacting against the wall with a small puff of pulverised stone and leaving the young boy quite unharmed.

For a long while, there was silence.

"Astounding," Mabaa whispered at last.

* * *

Much later the festivities of All Hallows Eve were getting into full swing. The time of celebration had begun, with proud parents swapping details of what greatness their beloved offspring were capable of. Adult witches stood around in small gaggles that seemed to continuously break up and re-form like the images in a kaleidoscope. The newly-ordained witch children sat in a large crèche in the centre of the adults, slowly making friends (and enemies) amongst themselves. Politics starts at an early age for the witches.

Medusa stood to one side, Crona with her, watching the proceedings with a healthy amount of contempt. She had neither a need for nor a desire to give the meaningless praise the other witches foisted upon one another ("Oh, your girl's animal is the mongoose, oh, how _wonderful_"). And even the witches politics was rather neutered nowadays. There had been a time when a witches coven hadn't been complete without at least one attempted murder. There had been civil wars, there had been assassinations and corruption and back-room deals that had threatened to split the witching world into fragments. Back then, when Medusa was young, there had been genuine power struggles. Her older sister had nearly usurped Mabaa herself. But now everyone seemed to be getting on with one another, blindly agreeing and heaping sugary words upon one another in an effort to keep in as many good books as they could.

The witches were stagnating, she thought. She could almost smell the bloat and the rot in the air. Long the bastion of evolution and change, now even they were succumbing to the dreary placidity of Death's ordered rule. The witches were sick with a disease they didn't even know existed.

But thankfully, she now had the cure.

"Medusa."

At the mention of her name she looked around in surprise. She had not heard Mabaa walk up behind her and yet there she was. By the way Crona jumped out of his skin next to her, she suspected that Mabaa had not walked at all.

"Yes, Grandwitch?" she asked, all smiles and goodwill.

"I'm afraid my old legs are not what they used to be," said Mabaa in a voice that suggested they were anything but. "Would you walk me out to the balcony, my sister? I find the air in here has become a little…stifling."

"Of course. Crona, the Grandwitch and I need to talk. Why don't you go and play with some of the other children?"

Crona looked like he'd rather take his chances with another dragon pup, but a steely glare from Medusa sent him scurrying off.

With great deliberateness Medusa and Mabaa walked out onto the balcony of the great hall where the celebrations were held. The night air was cold and crisp, a great relief after the humid air inside. The moon hung low in the sky, blood dripping from its insane grin. Its one eye leered down at her, and she coolly met its gaze.

"It is said that the land where the moon's blood falls is home to a great many powerful and magical creatures," said Mabaa. "I have heard tales of centaurs and unicorns, devils and abominations, islands that fly and waterfalls of pure magic. Naturally, I do not believe a word of it. But your child has given me cause to wonder."

Medusa said nothing.

"I suppose I should make it clear now. Crona is not a witch. To be a witch one has to be female, and I shall take your word that he is not. What he is is something much rarer. Tell me, Medusa, what do you know of wizards?"

Her heart almost skipped a beat at the mention of that word. "Enough," is all she said.

"Men who can use a witch's magic. There have only been a few in recorded history. Eibon was the most powerful. Merlin perhaps the most famous. About a half dozen others in total. Wizards are special, Medusa, in that the magics they specialise in are not like those of witches. Witches work with concrete objects: the snake, the tree, the bird and the wasp. Occasionally one might find a witch who specialises in more ethereal realms such as fire or air, but by and large witch magic is based firmly around the real world.

"By contrast, wizards tend to focus more on abstract concepts. Eibon was a master of ingenuity magic, although he was able to pass it off as simple creativity to avoid Death's ire. I don't know what Merlin worked with, although time would be my guess. Wizards tend to have a broader scope with their magic than witches, at the cost of it being much harder for them to learn it than it is for us."

"And you think Crona is a wizard?" asked Medusa when she was pretty sure Mabaa's brief lecture was over.

"Yes. And as for the magic he specialises in…"

Medusa didn't listen to the rest of what the Grandwitch had to say about that. She'd already worked it out for herself. Crona, hesitant uncertain little Crona, would have power over probability. She had to laugh. It made her wonder whether the universe did have a deep sense of irony after all.

As she walked Mabaa back inside, all she could think about is where she would go from there.

_A wizard, slaved to her will._

_The power of the black blood._

_The demon sword Ragnarok._

It was all looking _very_ promising indeed.

* * *

_Author's note: I'm not technically sure whether 'Mabaa' is a name or just a title (like 'Grandwitch'), so apologies if that's an error. I chose probability for Crona for two reasons: one, it's not something overused like the classical elements or lightning/gravity, and two, for some reason I think it would rather suit him considering what terrible luck he seems to have in the canon. (It could also be a joke about his famously ambiguous gender.) The next chapter _may_ involve Crona finally meeting Ragnarok, although that will raise the further issue of what Ragnarok will look like…_


	3. Chapter 3

_A Short Treatise upon the Nature of Madness_

_Penned by Lord Eibon, Wizard-Regent and member of Lord Death's personal guard_

There is a motion amongst some of my academic peers to refer to the times which have only recently passed – which began with the fall of the Witch Collective and ended with the immobilisation of Lord Death in the deserts of North America – as 'The Grim Times'. While I must admit the term seems needlessly histrionic to my ears, it does certainly give a sense of what the world endured during those short centuries. And now, as we pick up the pieces of civilisation and our planet continues upon its path once more, it seems like an excellent time for reflection upon how the world came to be shattered so profoundly and how we may take steps to ensure such catastrophe never occurs again.

After all, as the old saying has it: "forewarned is forearmed."

The events that befell the world all have their root in one underlying property of creation: madness. To understand the nature of madness whilst retaining sanity is difficult and not without danger, but it is a task that must be undertaken if the threat that emerged is not to do so again.

It is tempting to think of madness as a purely human quality. Certainly, the natural world does not seem to be mad. Far from it. Do not the planets revolve around the sun in perfectly geometric and predictable orbits? The laws of gravitation, motion, biology and chemistry all seem to point to the idea that the world around us is almost a paragon of order, and it is only humans and their supernatural derivatives that succumb to madness. That is a popular view of madness, and it is easy to see why. It treats madness as something 'other', something that the universe does not allow for. Viewing madness in this light is comforting for the sane. It allows them to believe that the universe is an ordered and rational place that obeys strict laws. Madness is something wrong and evil that we should have no compunction fighting against.

I submit that not only is such a view of madness misleading in the extreme, but also actively dangerous.

Whilst one may look at charts of tides, or one of the fine brass orreries forged by the Greek mathematicians, or any other such condensation of reality to numbers and formulae, and believe that the world is an ordered and rational place, a deeper look into the nature of things will reveal fundamental unpredictability in the core of our world. Huge and complex systems such as the atmosphere are quite impossible to predict with any certainty at all. The minds of creatures, nestled inside and sustained by the wonderfully complex organ that is the brain, are revealed to be quite unfathomable. Recent experiments of my own have lead me to believe that the world of the tiny particles of matter (referred to as 'atoms' by some natural philosophers) is an inherently random and unpredictable place. Madness, it seems, is hiding everywhere we look.

The fact of the matter is that madness, far from being some twisted alien notion foisted upon the clockwork of our world by humans, witches and the occasional kishin, is as much an underlying property of the universe as order is. One might even go so far as to say that it is only because of the madness of the sub-atomic that the order of the galactic is able to occur at all, although such descent into poetry is not my particular desire. That said, the fact remains: madness is here to stay.

With that brief discussion out of the way, it is now our duty to scrutinise the minutiae of madness. A colleague of mine whom I will not give the satisfaction of naming here refers to madness as occurring in different 'flavours', and while his choice of words might rightly be considered childish his central theory is not without merit. While the madness of the universe seems to be rather uniform and mundane – something akin to an inherent unpredictability – the madness that we need concern ourselves with is the madness that arises in the minds of men (and witches, kishin, etc). And it is here than an interesting set of divisions can be seen.

The kishin Asura, whose imprisonment brought an end to the Grim Times, was the first example of a kishin to walk the Earth that we know of. A kishin is, quite simply, a sentient being elevated to the paragon of madness through mental degeneration and the accumulation of power. I believe there may have been kishin before Asura and I have no doubt in my mind that there will be kishin after him. I refer to him because he will most likely be the kishin freshest in the reader's memory (however much the reader may wish that was not the case).

The story of Asura's rise and fall is well documented, so I will skip over that fragment of history and instead ask the reader this simple question: why did Asura act as he did? What drove him to acquire such power, and what drove him to the outer limits of madness?

The answer is simple: fear.

It is at this point that I feel I ought to remind the reader that, as a fellow member of Lord Death's personal guard, Asura and I were close friends before his succumbing to madness. I hope therefore that you will recognise that I alone might be uniquely positioned to provide an insight into the birth and maturation of a kishin. It is for this reason that I ask that my words, no matter how outlandish they seem or how repulsive to one's personal philosophy, are not rejected out of hand.

It is also at this point that I would ask the reader to remember Asura as a good man who tragically fell to his own demons, instead of as the rabid monster he became. But I understand that such pleas are more than likely to fall upon deaf ears, especially considering all that has come to pass, and will not press the issue.

Digressions aside, it was fear that drove Asura to become a kishin. He was possessed with a terrible, all-consuming fear of just about everything he encountered in the world. That he was still allowed a place at Lord Death's side speaks volumes of his fighting ability. Nevertheless, he was an individual motivated and ruled by fear. It was his fear that eventually rendered him mad. It is tempting to say at this point that he became the embodiment of madness, but I submit that he did not. He did not become the embodiment of all madness – instead, he became the embodiment of madness _through fear_.

This distinction is an important one, and opens up a terrible possibility. People point at Asura and say "that is how madness takes hold, through fear." But if fear is only _one of many_ conduits to madness, then we are in a much more precarious position than we suspected.

It is now my belief that there are at least eight major paths to madness that a soul could take in the process of becoming insane. If that number sounds familiar from the conflicts and destruction of the past years, then the reader may congratulate themselves upon being one step ahead of my exposition.

Earlier on, I made the case for madness and sanity – or 'order' as I referred to it – being equally present in the fabric of our reality. Now I ask the reader another question. If a soul dedicates itself to the preservation of sanity at all costs, as we eight did, may that not cause some form of imbalance in the universe? Consider this analogy: a powerful magnetic pole, be it north or south, will generate around it a magnetic field _that contains the opposite polarity_. There can be no such thing as a magnetic monopole. For every north pole, there is a south pole, and for every south, a north. Like all analogies it is not perfect, but the point, I think, is made. A soul dedicated to eliminating madness in a world where madness is inherent is likely to find its work counterproductive at best.

The truth is that we eight, now referred to as the Great Old Ones in a manner that I think will become less tongue-in-cheek as the years progress, are responsible for a great deal of madness in this world despite our effort to fight it. I believe we may act as the aforementioned 'attempted monopole' – although we ourselves are (or should I say were) not mad, we facilitate madness around us.

Since three of the eight are dead, one is far gone into insanity and the remaining four are scattered across the globe it is difficult for me to test this theory, but so far I believe I have firmly identified five conduits by which madness may infect a soul.

They are order, wisdom, rage, terror and power.

Going mad through rage, terror or power is fairly self-explanatory. Madness through wisdom is perhaps harder for the general reader to swallow, but not too difficult a concept to understand if one considers what, in the pursuit of information, one may actually learn. Perhaps madness through knowledge would be a better way to put it. Madness though order certainly seems contradictory, but again I think it is not too difficult to visualise. An overwhelming desire for order (be it geometric, chronological, political or any other type) might very well drive someone insane in this less-than-perfect world.

As for the remaining three, I am less certain. Chaos certainly seems likely, and love does not seem outside the realms of possibility. Personally I think isolation may very well be a conduit. Without the three that Asura consumed, I cannot fully confirm my theory.

Needless to say, the idea that we fostered madness even as we fought it has not been a popular theory amongst the Great Old Ones. Lord Death (order) refuses even to consider it, which I think is a very dangerous course of action. I have heard that he plans to have children in the future; it will be interesting to see how sane or otherwise they end up after maturing around what may be quite a beacon of madness. Excalibur (rage) also does not listen, although I suppose that is not unusual. Asura (terror) is of course rather beyond conversation. Only one other (power) will hear my theory, and he thankfully agrees with me. He has asked me to devise a prison for him, which will separate him from this world and prevent the madness he may inflict reaching anyone else. Work upon such a device is proceeding with due haste.

And as for me (wisdom)? I have much yet to do. Many of my works still litter this world, waiting to fall into the wrong hands. Some security measures need to be put in place before I depart from this place. But depart I must, and I hope in time my companions will do the same. Maybe one day we will finally see a world free of all interference, where uncertainty and doubt are not the horrors they are today, and where good and evil keep one another in check. To the reader of this small work, I give one final message:

A colleague of mine in China once said that "one should study the past if one is to understand the future." I have given you as succinct and valuable account of the past as I am able. The future is your place, not mine. And I beg you not to make the same mistakes that we did, all those years ago.

In order, we are shackled slaves. In chaos, we are quarrelling kings. In fear, cowering children. In rage, blustering soldiers. In wisdom we are gods and in love we are fools. Alone we are weak, and with power comes our downfall.

But in harmony, we are free.

_Eibon_

* * *

Medusa read and re-read the manuscript until her eyes hurt. It had taken months for her to track it down, a dog-eared copy of some of Eibon's last writings before he mysteriously vanished. Banned, of course – owning such a book was a serious crime in the eyes of Lord Death.

But she was pretty sure that if she was ever brought to trial, ownership of seditious material would _not_ be the first thing she was accused of.

And who could blame Lord Death for supressing this work? Attached to the treatise were pages and pages of calculations and scribblings, copied fastidiously from the original by someone who obviously took more pride in producing an exact copy than making them legible. Medusa grinned as she looked over them. For a paragon of wisdom, Eibon was remarkably naïve. The text was almost a how-to manual for building a kishin. Eibon had been desperate to show his working for his various theories on their birth and in doing so had given her more than she needed.

Medusa pulled out a leather-bound book, turned to a fresh page and began to take notes. Outside, darkness fell and the moon gambolled over the hills outsider her small room. Working by candlelight until the candles had burned down to stubs, she filled page after page with equations and formulae. At last, as the sun hauled itself over the horizon and the stars faded out, she sat back, exhausted.

Glancing at a clock, she saw she was late for work. After carefully hiding her night's labours, she set off for Death City, the promise of a brave new world ringing in her ears.

* * *

_Author's note: I do apologise if you came here hoping for Cona and Ragnarok and were confronted with Eibon wittering on instead. From now on, this story is going to start properly intersecting with the canon, which might mean a trip to Italy before very long. In the meantime, though, my thanks for reading all this._

_P.S. The idea that the three other 'flavours' of madness not established (so far) in the canon being chaos, love and loneliness came from a post on Soul Eater's 'WMG' page on TvTropes, and the credit for the idea must go to whoever wrote that post.  
_


	4. Chapter 4

"So you're Ragnarok?"

Ragnarok glared through the bars of his cell at the skinny kid with pink hair.

"Who's asking?" he spat.

The boy looked around him, as if expecting to find a crowd behind his back. Seeing no-one else in this dark, dank dungeon but himself and the weapon, he looked back at Ragnarok with a frown on his face.

"_I_ am," he said, as if Ragnarok was unfathomably stupid.

Ragnarok sighed. He had a feeling this was going to be a long day.

"And who are you?" he asked, as patiently as he could.

"Crona. Crona Gorgon, I suppose, although no-one ever seems to use my last name."

Ragnarok frowned. _Gorgon? As in…?_

"Are you that bitch's kid?" he asked, looking at Crona with a calculating gaze.

Crona scowled and refused to meet Ragnarok's eyes. "If by _that bitch_ you mean my own mother then yes, I suppose I am."

Ragnarok stood up and began to walk towards the door. He was a tall, powerfully-built young man who looked to be anywhere between his late teens and mid-twenties. Shaggy black hair fell down in an untidy fringe that nearly obscured his eyes, and an unusual x-shaped mark ran across the bridge of his nose. He towered over the younger boy, who was dressed in a black suit and a white shirt with the collar pulled up.

Before he could quite reach the bars of his cell, something tightened around his waist and pulled taut, stopping him from going any further. He knew if he looked down he'd see the familiar black band that anchored him to the wall and changed shape to restrain him even if he was in weapon form. That witch had been quite resourceful in keeping him harnessed, but he was close enough to the cell bars for what he had in mind.

"So what does the bitch want you to talk to me about?" he asked Crona, who was leaning on the bars. _Perfect…_

"She wants me to be your new meister," said Crona. "Also, _please_ stop calling her that."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe if she hadn't locked me up in here for seven years I might be more polite." Ragnarok rubbed his chin, as if considering the boy's offer. "I'm sorry, kid, but I think I'll have to turn you mummy's offer down. But don't look so glum! I think I can find a good enough use for you in the meantime. Your soul looks quite tasty…"

And with a lightning-fast movement he stabbed his arm – now a jet-black sword blade – out through the bars and into the boy's throat.

Immediately he realised something was amiss. He knew exactly what it felt like to cut through human flesh, and this kid didn't feel like that _at all_. Instead of the wet heat of muscle and tendons, there was instead a strange coolness. His sword arm felt numb, almost as if it wasn't really there at all.

Crona gave him a look of enormous contempt and grabbed Ragnarok's blade with his left hand. Yanking Ragnarok closer to the bars, he jabbed his right fist through them and directly into the weapon's face. There was a nasty crunching sound and Ragnarok bellowed in pain. Crona let go and Ragnarok collapsed to the floor of his cell, blood pouring from his broken nose and his blade slipping free from the boy's throat with no resistance whatsoever.

For a brief moment there was only the sound of the weapon's blood dripping onto the floor.

"What…what the hell did you just _do_?" asked Ragnarok, his voice trembling.

"You wouldn't understand," said Crona simply. "Not unless you're familiar with the concept of the multiverse?"

"Can't say I am," muttered Ragnarok, massaging his face.

"Thought not. Can I come in?"

Ragnarok look up in surprise. Crona had produced a large iron key from somewhere, and was slotting it into the door lock.

"You need my permission?" Ragnarok laughed. He'd been in a few jails before this one, but not once had his jailers asked him if they could come in. Usually they just told him to stand by the far wall and casually reminded him that they'd beat the crap out of him if he didn't comply. Then again, he _had_ just had the crap beaten out of him, so maybe this wasn't so different after all.

"No," replied Crona. "But it seemed polite to ask."

"You're a weird kid," Ragnarok muttered, half to himself, as Crona closed the door behind him.

"And you're a rude idiot."

Ragnarok was tempted to take another swing at the kid for that, and was already getting back to his feet, but Crona was one step ahead of him. A black, arrowhead-shaped blade sprouted from his wrist and came to a halt less than a hair's breadth away from Ragnarok's neck.

Ragnarok, quite sensibly, froze.

"I'd be a bit more careful, if I were you," said Crona in a voice that promised terrible things for the weapon if he didn't do what he was told. "You shouldn't make any sudden movements with a sharp edge so close to a vital blood vessel. Your blood, unlike mine, isn't black. Or at least, it isn't yet. So if you get cut, you _will_ bleed."

Ragnarok wasn't used to being held hostage by kids half his size, but equally he hadn't survived on the streets of America for almost fifty years by being stupid. Slowly, very slowly, he shuffled away from the boy. Once he was an acceptable distance away, the blade softened and seemed almost to flow back into the boy's wrist.

Backed up against the wall of his cell, Ragnarok considered his options. On the one hand, he could just carry on telling this kid to piss off. After seven years locked in a dungeon by the kid's mother, the idea of scuppering her plans in whatever way he could had a definite appeal. But apart from a rather insipid revenge, what would that get him? The rest of his life surrounded by rotting stone, in all likelihood, until he went mad from loneliness and boredom.

And while the kid was a bit jumpy, and could do stuff the weapon couldn't begin to understand (could witches even have sons? Ragnarok wondered), he seemed to be a pretty good fighter for his age. An offer of a meister is not one a weapon turns down lightly.

And it had been _so_ long since Ragnarok had gotten into a good fight.

"OK, look," he said, putting his hands out in a gesture of reconciliation. "I think we may have gotten off on the wrong footing here-"

"Was that before or after you stabbed me in the throat?" Crona asked bitterly.

"Yeah, right… sorry about that."

Crona sighed and shook his head. "It's alright. You acted about as well as I expected," he said glumly. "Considered Lady Medusa's offer any more?" he asked quickly, before Ragnarok could ask what _that_ meant.

"I was getting to that. I think I might take you up on that offer after all. After all, whatever she wants me to do, it can't be worse than rotting down here, can it?"

Crona raised an eyebrow at that last bit, but seemed to cheer up nonetheless. "OK. That's…that's good. Thanks, Ragnarok," he said almost shyly. "I wasn't looking forward to having to tell Lady Medusa that you'd said no."

Ragnarok wondered what would have happened to Crona if he had said no. Considering his own mother made him refer to her as 'Lady Medusa', probably nothing pleasant. "Don't mention it," he said. "I'm doing it more for me than I am for you."

"Still, thanks anyway," said Crona. "Cigarette?" he asked, pulling a carton of the things from one of his jacket pockets.

Ragnarok made a surprised noise. "Didn't have you down as a smoker, kid," he said.

"I'm not. But I heard you were, so…"

_Freedom and a cigarette_, thought Ragnarok as he took one from Crona. _Today gets better by the minute_. "You got a light?" he asked.

Crona shook his head. "Don't need one." He grinned, slightly self-consciously. "Watch this."

He held out his hand, palm upwards, and seemed to concentrate. After a second, a strange ball of light burst into life just above his skin. About the size of a tennis ball and so bright it hurt Ragnarok's eyes to look at it, it spat and fizzed like it was alive.

"Fire magic, hm?" he asked, lighting his cigarette off it. _A witch's son…_ he thought to himself. Hadn't he heard rumours about them somewhere? Weren't they meant to be different?

"Not fire. Plasma," said Crona.

"And what's plasma?" asked Ragnarok.

"What most stars are made of. My magic is to do with probabilities, you see, and in some universes the sun isn't where it is right now. In some, it's actually where we are in this one. What I'm doing is kind of like blending those universes into this one, but only in this small volume of space."

Ragnarok paused. "Sorry, didn't understand a word of that," he said at last.

Crona sighed. "I'm using suns that aren't there to light your cigarette," he said. He flexed his hand, and the plasma grew and shrank as he did so. "It's the same when I hit you earlier. It wasn't just me who punched you, but fifty or so parallel versions of me as well."

"No wonder it hurt," Ragnarok said, running his hand over his face. "So then why the hell do you need me? Sounds like between magic and that weird blade thing you did earlier you don't have much need for a weapon."

"Well, it was Lady Medusa's idea, really. She said I should be your meister, so here I am. Oh, and that blade was black blood. You're going to need some too if we're going to be able to resonate. Plus, my magic can sometimes be a bit…"

Crona trailed off as the plasma ball in his hand suddenly started sparking much more violently. He gave a yelp and tried to fling it away from himself, but before he could it erupted violently. There was a tremendous _bang_ and a flash of blinding light. When Ragnarok was able to see again, Crona was looking distinctly worse for wear, his suit in tatters and his face singed.

"…a bit unstable," finished Crona quietly.

Ragnarok started to laugh. His first meister for twenty years was a wizard child who had problems not setting himself on fire. He was still technically the prisoner of an amoral witch who had god-only-knows what in store for him. And to cap it all, it looked like he was about to be introduced to something that went by the ominous-sounding name of 'black blood'.

Things were definitely looking up.

* * *

_Author's note: updates might be a bit less frequent after this, but hopefully I'll be able to keep them fairly regular. Once again, thanks for reading._


	5. Chapter 5

Have you ever been told by someone not to do something, only to go right ahead and do it? That was how Maka Albarn felt as she laid her trembling hand on the cathedral door. Her instincts told her to turn around, to run, to get as far away as she could from that place in which sixty souls had vanished in the blink of an eye.

_But I have to know_.

She focused her attention, trying desperately to regain a sense of the souls that had mysteriously disappeared. _Relax. Concentrate. They _have_ to be in there, somewhere_. She could feel the warm evening breeze on her cheek, hear the low hum of Florence at night droning in her ears. Again, she sent her perception out before her, seeking out the souls of everyone around her.

And again the results came back: only two. A weapon and a meister. No normal human souls in this cathedral, not a single one. Perhaps she had been mistaken? Maybe there never had been anyone but the weapon and meister in there in the first place. No, that was impossible. She couldn't make a mistake of that magnitude… could she?

Get out of here, go, _run!_ That was what she ought to do, and she knew it. Something that could wipe out sixty people in less time than it took her to draw breath was not something she should be tangling with. Better to just call it in, yes? Let Lord Death know and they'd send out someone more qualified. After all, she and Soul had done what they had to do. The kishin egg that had been stalking the Florentine night these past few weeks had been swiftly dealt with. Their mission was over – no need to overdo things, right?

_But I can't just walk away from this._

She looked again at the souls on the other side of the door. Weapon and meister, just as before. Except now she looked closely, there was something a little bit odd about the meister. It was hard to describe, but the soul kept on flickering. When Maka was young her father had owned an old analogue television set which had started out on the brink of collapse and only gotten worse from there. There were usually bands of static sliding up and down the screen, and the colours often changed at random moments. Spirit had joked that he always knew when Lord Death was getting a call because the screen would go dead for a second. And this meister's soul felt a bit like that – shifting, crawling with static like a badly-projected image.

_I have a duty to find out_.

The massive wooden doors creaked horribly as they swung open, releasing a draught of cold air out into the plaza. Maka caught the distinctive tang of blood on that air, just a hint of slaughter as it was swept past her and up into the night sky. With Soul following close behind her, she took a tentative step inside the basilica. As her eyes adjusted to the lower light inside, she could see nothing out of the ordinary. No slicks of blood, no piles of bodies, no severed limbs or anything else that might suggest sixty people had met their deaths in this place only minutes ago. The inside was just another example of the Renaissance art and architecture that Soul had been enthusing about all day: a high ceiling supported by sparsely placed columns, rows of pews facing an altar and a stained glass window. Behind her, she heard her weapon give an appreciative murmur.

She peered into the darkness at the far end of the church, trying to make out the weapon and the meister that were in there somewhere.

And someone, she suddenly noticed, was staring back.

As her eyes finally adjusted properly she saw him: a large, muscular man with lank black hair and an odd mark across the top of his nose. He was dressed in fashionably tattered clothes, the kind that you could tell were torn just for show. He regarded her with folded arms and a contemptuous glare.

"Got company," he said, angling his head slightly as if addressing someone behind him. His eyes didn't leave Maka's.

Maka scanned the room for the other person, and saw a hooded figure sat on one of the pews. At the sound of the large man's voice, the hooded person stood and turned around. At first Maka thought it might be a monk or someone else who worked at the cathedral, but when he spoke Maka recognised the voice as belonging to a boy, not much older than her by the sound of things.

"Chi sei?" asked the hooded figure, an Italian phrase Maka had picked up only this morning. "Who are you?"

"Maka Albarn, student at the DWMA," she replied, deciding to keep things to the point. "I sensed human souls in here earlier. What happened to them?"

The boy with the hood had moved far enough down the aisle that she was able to see him properly now. He was tall but almost painfully thin, with pink hair and hooded blue eyes. He was wearing a black suit and an odd hooded waistcoat, and a white dress shirt with the collar turned up.

"Oh, them? They… they left," the boy said. He pulled his hood down as he did so.

Maka scoffed. "That quickly? Please, come up with something better than _that_. Who are you two, anyway?"

The boy's soul – he was the meister, she could see that now – flickered again as he replied. "All right, fine. We ate them. Well, _he_ ate them anyway," he added, gesturing towards the weapon. The man grinned at her and licked his lips. "I just kind of helped," the boy went on.

"The hunting of human souls is _forbidden_," growled Maka through clenched teeth. Behind her she felt Soul tense up, ready to transform on her command. "The rules of the DWMA are absolute! Who are you two?"

"The rules?" The boy laughed, but there was no humour behind it. "The _rules_? Oh, yes, you DWMA people love rules, don't you? Rules such as 'kill on sight' and 'no mercy', oh, aren't they such good rules? Don't you just love to slave yourselves to a master who has no human feelings, whose motivations you can't even begin to understand? To give your lives to build a world you never agreed to? To accept arbitrary rules and regulations that only ever make you weaker? To-"

"Oh, _shut up_. I didn't come here to discuss philosophy and I certainly didn't come here to listen to you insult Lord Death! And besides, you're a fine one to talk about 'kill on sight' rules considering what you did here. I've heard enough. Soul, transform now." A flash of light, and the reassuring weight was in her hands again. "We're going to stop you, right now."

Maka roared and flung herself at the boy. He stood his ground as she charged at him, switching to a fighting stance, and raised his arm as she swung Soul in towards his head in a blow that would have taken it clean off his shoulders if Soul's blade hadn't hit his arm (his skinny, weak arm) and stopped dead with a dull clang.

Maka's eyes went wide with surprise. The boy grinned.

"And I bet one of your rules is that everyone's blood is red," he giggled.

* * *

High above the little drama being played out in the church, a pair of snake-like eyes watched everything with a calculated interest. Nestled behind a layer of protective magic, they quickly took the measure of the girl's soul and that of her scythe as well. Medusa considered the DWMA students who had blundered into her little field trip and smiled.

"Crona," she murmured softly, almost lovingly, "we cannot waste time. Retrieve those souls for Ragnarok quickly. We must leave here soon."

Down below, she saw the soul of her son twitch slightly as he received her commands.

* * *

Crona swept Ragnarok down in a short arc that very nearly but not quite sliced Maka apart. He tried to follow up with a blade of his own but she dodged the blood, ducking out of range and jumping backwards.

Maka was already analysing the situation in her head. _We're both close range combatants, but we're too evenly matched. He has that blood defence of his to stop my attacks, but I'm faster than he is and can dodge him. It's a stalemate. I need to find some way around that blood of his. If I can negate its protection then I'll win this fight._

She noticed all of a sudden that Crona wasn't attacking her anymore. Instead he was stood stock still with his head tilted to one side and his weapon dangling from his hand like an unwanted toy. It looked almost like he was listening to something only he could hear.

"Yes, of course," he whispered.

This might be the opening Maka needed. Hoisting Soul above her head, she made ready to attack again. Crona meanwhile seemed to have almost lost interest in her.

"Soul protect – release," he said.

And any of Maka's thoughts of attacking him again were lost to time as the strange, flickering image of a soul that Crona had projected disappeared. It fell away like a sloughed off skin and his real soul shone through, a deep purple sphere that crackled with power.

_What… no, no, that's impossible! This can't be real, this can't be happening!_ Maka gasped in a mix of amazement and fear.

Crona chuckled. "I'm sorry about this," he said. "But it turns out I have to get rid of you a bit quicker than I planned." He raised the palm of his free hand to face Maka and a blindingly-bright bolt of what looked like fire lanced across the cathedral towards her. She threw herself out of the way just in time, feeling a wave of heat wash over her back as it passed overhead. The pillar behind her exploded in a burst of molten stone and dancing sparks as she rolled for cover behind one of the pews.

"You're fast," said Crona appreciatively as he disintegrated the pew he thought Maka was crouched behind with another jet of plasma. "Faster than I expected."

"Hurry up, Crona! Stop flirting with her and get her soul!" Ragnarok bellowed from his side. The weapon was clearly impatient. Crona frowned. Ever since they'd partnered the weapon never seemed to be able to get enough souls. It was getting rather exasperating, the way he kept demanding them every hour of the day.

"All right!" he growled, aiming a third plasma bolt to land just behind Maka, forcing her to move closer towards him. He took a step forward and raised Ragnarok to deliver a killing blow. Across different realities hundreds of identical Cronas performed the same action and he bled their strength into himself, striking down with tremendous force.

* * *

Maka felt the jolt of the impact as the sword smashed into Soul's shaft. There was a great crash of metal impacting on metal and Soul jumped in her hands like he'd been electrocuted. The shockwave carried on through her and clubbed her to the ground, her back smacking into the cold marble of the cathedral floor hard enough to drive the wind from her. She had a feeling that she'd just received at least one broken rib.

None of that mattered, though, not really. What mattered was that Soul was screaming.

She felt it before she saw it, a tiny hairline fracture where the blade met the shaft. The point where the sword had hit him was oozing blood, a dull crimson in the low light. She staggered to her feet, noting distantly and with some mild relief that the boy seemed to have put so much energy into his swing that he was temporarily exhausted. He made a half-hearted swipe at her, which she dodged.

"Soul! Are you OK?" she yelled.

"I'm fine," he rasped. She could see his image in the blade; it looked like his arm was broken. "You just focus on what's important!"

_Another hit like that and he's done for. He'll _shatter_! That's it, we're getting out of here!_

Maka turned and bolted for the door, ducking another stream of white-hot plasma as she did so. She slammed her shoulder into the sturdy oak (_didn't I leave these open!? When did they close?_) but it refused to open. All she succeeded in doing was bruising herself.

"Come on, come on! Open up!"

"You ought to pay more attention to your surroundings," came the boy's voice, cold and mocking and right behind her. "Those doors open inwards. They only open one way."

She whirled around to see him right behind her, the sword high over his head. She could see the weapon's eyes in the blade, alive with hunger.

"Maka, block!"

"But Soul, if I block you'll die!"

"So what? That's my job, to keep you alive! Now block!"

"But-"

The sword came down, quickly and cleanly, and there was the noise of ripping flesh. Suddenly Maka was surrounded by blood.

But none of it was hers.

* * *

_Author's note: this was a surprisingly hard chapter to do – I'm not great at writing fights to start with and with this I wanted to have it follow the canon fight pretty closely, which meant a lot of re-watching episode 7. Still, I hope it's up to scratch and I'll be starting work on the second half soon. The next few chapters will probably just be wizard!Crona getting into the same fights as s/he did in the canon, with the real divergences yet to come. And once again, my thanks for reading this._


	6. Chapter 6

It was, Lord Death reflected, an almost universal truism that children thought that they could do a better job of things than their parents.

He remembered when he was just a child, barely a few centuries old, he would often berate his own father over the old Reaper's decisions and management policies. How frequently the two would find themselves at odds over some minor issue really was quite remarkable, now he thought about it. Of course, the problems they had had to deal with back when he was growing up had been significantly different to the ones he faced now. Humanity had only just begun to settle down into agriculture when his father, Kid's grandfather (whom the boy knew very little of, Death thought – and perhaps best to leave it that way) had taken up the mantle of their Reaper. Witches were only just beginning to evolve. Kishin were utterly unheard of. People certainly couldn't transform into weapons. It was, looking back, a remarkably simpler time – and yet the two of them had still managed to disagree over so much. It had probably cost them dearly, over the years.

He had tried to teach Kid better than his own father had taught him, but the natural rebellion of the younger generation still affected the boy. Lord Death could feel it now, through the strange and unshakable bond every Reaper had with its child. Kid thought he had a decent solution to the problem at hand, and was getting increasingly exasperated that his father seemed to be pursuing other, less fruitful methods.

It was probably a matter of pride, Death though. The boy was still smarting from his defeat aboard the Nidhogg. It was perfectly natural for him to want to strike back at the thing that had wounded and humiliated him. Well, it was perfectly _human_, anyway. Death sometimes wondered if there wasn't some truth to the old saying that Reapers often began to act more and more like their charges as the generations went by.

But whatever the reason, Kid's preferred method – hunt down the Demon Sword and its mysterious meister and kill them at the first opportunity they got – was not what Lord Death had in mind. Sometimes, the older generations could appreciate another truism that the younger could not: sometimes it is best to take one's time about things. Rushing headlong into a situation had a nasty tendency to make things worse, something he had learned the hard way.

So the best thing to do, in Death's mind, was for everyone to just sit down, have a cup of tea and look over what they knew already. And that was precisely what they were doing.

He had gathered all those who had fought the demon sword and its meister for a meeting in the Death Room, to discuss the nature of the problem and how they might solve it. Sat around a small table sipping green tea, Maka Albarn, Professor Stein and Kid gave their accounts of their battles to Death and Sid Barett, along with any theories they had or anything unusual they had noticed whist fighting their newest enemy.

So far, the results had been less than stellar.

After more than two hours of discussion, what they knew could be summarised into three main points. Number one: the demon sword Ragnarok had returned from his seven-year disappearance and seemed to be on the verge of becoming a kishin. Number two: Ragnarok was wielded by a meister of unknown abilities and powers. Death had the feeling that Stein had a theory about this mysterious young meister, but did not ask him. He had known Stein long enough to know that if the man thought his ideas worth sharing, he would. And number three: a witch was involved at some point. Both Stein and Maka could verify this fact, after the distraction of a witch's soul materialising in the Florentine sky had allowed the demon sword and meister to escape. Kid had reported detecting no such soul in the Baltic, though – although thanks to the existence of soul protection that didn't mean much.

And that was, by and large, all they knew. It was worryingly little. It was also a little embarrassing – a kishin could be born very soon now, and they knew almost nothing about it. How it had slipped under their radar for so long was something Lord Death planned to look into thoroughly when this was all over.

Pushing that thought aside for a second, he encouraged the three meisters sat around the table to try and remember anything else they could about the thing they had faced, even if it didn't seem relevant.

_I fear that we're running out of time_, he thought.

* * *

Sat across the table from his father, Kid made only the smallest effort to disguise his dissatisfaction with how the situation was being handled.

_We know we know nothing. What we should be doing is going out and hunting that thing down, not sitting around reminding ourselves of our ignorance!_

He shot surreptitious glances at the other two humans. Maka was doing her best 'model student' routine, giving Lord Death her full attention and looking appropriately studious when he asked her to try and remember anything else important. Kid knew it was a sham. She was more concerned about the health of Soul than any strategy meetings. He'd gone off to see Dr Medusa while this meeting took place, to see how his stitches and broken shoulder were healing. Maka wouldn't be happy until he got back with a full bill of health. Kid, along with just about everyone else, had tried to convince Maka that what had happened to her weapon was not her fault (that in fact they had both acted admirably given the circumstances) but she insisted upon blaming herself.

Maka's distress, Kid supposed, was an example of what the demon sword and its meister had done to them all. The DWMA had grown rather complacent over the years, confident that there wasn't an enemy that they could defeat. And now, in the space of a month, they'd been soundly beaten by a foe that had come out of the blue, severely wounding one of them and escaping scot-free in both cases. The recent string of defeats had served to dent everyone's confidence – up to and including, Kid suspected, his father himself.

As his father spoke again, addressing Professor Stein, Kid recalled his own run-in with Ragnarok and his meister.

* * *

_The poltergeist's words – something about how he couldn't be beaten, Kid thought, although he hadn't really been listening to the tedious creature – were cut off as a bolt of fire shot down from the sky, drilling neatly through one ragged black sail of the Nidhogg and splashing down onto the poltergeist's body. It gave a short scream of agony and there was a sound like meat in a flame._

_As the charred remains collapsed to the deck, something hurtled out of the sky and landed next to them, slamming down onto the wood hard enough to splinter it. It was a young boy, dressed in a suit not too dissimilar to Kid's own, a hood concealing his face and great black wings sprouting from his shoulders. He seemed not to notice Kid at all._

_Slowly, the boy picked himself up from the shattered deck. Cold, ice-blue eyes swept over the ship, met Kid's own for a moment, and ignored him completely. The boy reached round to his back and Kid suddenly noticed a series of black bands running around the boy's chest like the restrains on a straitjacket. These bands now seemed to flow away behind him, and the wings from his shoulders twitched._

"_Ragnarok…" the boy whispered._

_It turned out that the wings did not belong to the boy at all, but instead were part of the massive sword he pulled from his back. Like the bands that had held the two together, these too seemed to melt and flow back into the body of the sword. A mouth oozed into existence above the hilt and grinned._

_And suddenly the deck below Kid's feet was glowing, the pure blue light of uncorrupted human souls. Like worms after a heavy rain, the souls from the Nidhogg's hold began to rise out of the wooden floor, making little 'pop' noises as they did so._

_Kid suddenly had a horrible feeling about how this was going to end._

_The sword cried out in glee as the souls started to pour towards its open mouth. Kid shouted as well, a snarl as he realised he was utterly impotent to stop what was happening. Dimly, he realised Liz seemed to be saying something but he paid no attention. His whole being was focused on the damn sword as it cheered and gorged itself, mocking him as it devoured the innocent, as it did what he was sworn to prevent._

_The boy, holding the sword above his head, smiled down at Kid serenely. It was a smile of victory._

We'll see about that_, thought Kid._

* * *

The click-click-clack of Stein's screw brought Kid back out of his reverie. He looked around quickly, wondering if had just asked him a question.

"I think we have made a mistake here," Stein was saying.

_You don't say_, thought Kid.

"We have conducted all our operations with the assumption that the demon sword Ragnarok is the most immediate threat to deal with. And while his progress towards becoming a kishin is certainly a matter for concern, there is something else we must consider as well. That is the meister who wields Ragnarok: who is he? What stake does he have in all this? Is there a connection between him and the witches, and if so, what is it?"

"Hmmm?" said Lord Death. It was one of those noises he made that meant a cross between 'go on' and 'I was hoping we'd get to this'.

"I think, from what I saw of his soul in Italy, that this boy is a wizard."

There was a long silence. Maka and Kid looked suitably bewildered, although both were thinking that such a theory would certainly explain what they had seen. Lord Death, however, managed looked quite miserable despite his largely immobile mask.

"I was afraid of that," the Reaper said at last.

"A wizard?" Maka asked. "What do you mean?"

"The vast majority of witches' children are female," explained Stein. "If a male child is born of a witch, it usually has no magic ability at all and frequently suffers debilitating physical conditions. But very occasionally one is born healthy and with magical powers. These are wizards: men who can use witch magic."

"Like the immortal werewolf?"

"No, he is not a wizard. He can only perform true magic because he stole the eye of the Grandwitch – those ice powers are little more than cheap parlour tricks compared to what witches and wizards can accomplish."

"Wizards are incredibly rare," said Lord Death. "There have only been about eight in recorded history. But this means that we might be in luck. The birth of something so rare will not have gone unnoticed by the witches. They might know more about it than we do."

As Death and Stein started to formulate and discuss possible plans, Kid found himself pondering the magic the boy had shown on the _Nidhogg_.

* * *

_Kid leapt up onto the ship's forecastle, dodging a swipe of the black sword as he did so, and rammed his fist into the boy's stomach. The boy doubled over with a sound like someone smacking a pillow and Kid followed up with an elbow blow to the back of his neck. A swift kick sent the boy flying into the air, a jump put Kid above him, and two gunshots sent him flying back down. The boy crashed right through the already-weakened deck of the ship and disappeared into the bowels of the ship with a cry. Kid landed neatly next to the hole with a sense of satisfaction._

"_Hell is inside your head," he had said right before Kid had attacked him. What a stupid sentiment. As if it was some kind of defence? Whether it was true or not, only a coward dealt with their fears through such despicable means as the boy and his weapon. Kid was very glad to be rid of them._

_Suddenly a hand punched up through the deck, sending fragments of wood in all directions. Like some terrible thing climbing from its grave, the boy hauled himself up. He looked none the worse for wear despite having just been kicked through a ship._

"_You'll have to do better than that," he grinned at Kid as he clambered to his feet. Kid's eyes widened in surprise. The boy raised his hand and sent a spray of the same white fire that had killed the poltergeist at Kid. Kid threw himself out of the way just in time, forcing himself not to immediately check to see if his suit had singed or not. He opened fire on the boy, but his shots didn't seem to penetrate at all._

What the hell is he?_ Kid thought._

_The boy lunged at him, the sword coming within an inch of Kid's head as he ducked and brought up an arm to parry the blow. He tried to throw the boy off balance, but before he could a second blade sprouted from the boy's left wrist and skewered Kid's arm. Kid gritted his teeth against the pain and kicked out, knocking the boy back before firing another salvo directly into his face._

_That seemed to have an effect, even if it was only one of surprise. The boy staggered back a few paces with a slightly stunned expression._

"_You'll pay! I'll show you!"_

_Both Kid and the boy looked around in surprise as the charred body of the poltergeist crawled painfully towards them, shaking its fist._

He's still alive?_ thought Kid incredulously._

"_Oh, hell," muttered the boy._

_As they watched, their fight almost forgotten, the poltergeist's body did a bizarre little routine of lining up and aiming the Nidhogg's cannons, all the while gibbering on about honour and how the two boys had very little of it. Kid thought that was rather rich coming from a creature that had murdered hundreds._

"_Fire!" the poltergeist yelled, and the cannons did so. Kid effortlessly dodged and deflected the ones aimed at him, which impacted harmlessly against the Nidhogg and exploded in clouds of thick smoke. The boy seemed to make no effort to stop them at all._

_Kid was waiting for the smoke to clear so he could have a clear shot at the poltergeist when he felt it._

_It was, he thought later, a bit like a soul wavelength. But unlike a soul wavelength, which was concentrated around its owner's body, this felt more diffuse and dispersed. It wormed its way inside Kid's head and seemed to infuse his brain with images of chaos, death, destruction and insanity._

_It was the madness wavelength of a gestating kishin._

_It was then that he knew that he had to stop this thing there and then. As he smoke from the cannon fire cleared he could see the weapon's soul wavelength shimmering about the boy, a bright red sphere that warped and twisted as he watched._

_The boy, dwarfed by his weapon's soul, looked up at Kid and grinned maliciously. _

"_Ragnarok… madness resonance," he commanded._

_The poltergeist started gibbering in fear, utterly ignored by both the Reaper and the kishin and its meister._

_Along with the soul and madness wavelengths, a third force started to swirl about the Nidhogg as the kishin egg's madness boosted the power of its meister. Magical energies started to build up inside the boy like electricity in a capacitor. Kid fired uselessly into the centre of it all, his soul wavelength-bullets batted away harmlessly by the kishin's soul. The air crackled like it was on fire and Kid's teeth started to itch. The area was saturated with magic now, bristling with it._

"_Goodbye, little Reaper boy," the boy said, and screamed._

* * *

_Crona howled in agony as he fed every last shred of energy his body contained into the maelstrom of magic that was swirling about the Nidhogg._

_With the extra reserves of magic granted to him by Ragnarok's madness resonance, fuelled by the souls from the ghost ship, he reached into the fabric of reality. Using plasma from non-existant stars had been one of the first tricks he had learned (he had got the idea from a science documentary Lady Medusa had let him watch as a reward for killing his first human), and now he planned to do it on a scale he'd never tried before._

_In a thousand, a million universes the sun was not the small chuckling thing that circled his world but a mighty, white-hot giant. The chance of such a thing erupting upon the surface of his Earth was so vanishingly small it was as close to zero as you could get. But with all the magic available to him, he could change that number quite considerably._

_He grinned, laughing in spite of his pain, as the power flowed through him. He could feel it snag on the universes he had chosen, and start to drag them into this one. He held out his arms, focusing his power, channelling it, aiming it._

"_Sunstorm!"_

_A massive cloud of plasma crashed out into existence just above the deck of the Nidhogg. It superheated the air around it in a microsecond, creating an expanding cloud of gases that buffeted and pummelled the ship. A blizzard of x-rays, created alongside the plasma, lanced through everything around them. The plasma itself expanded, a ball of liquid fire that reached down and effortlessly consumed the frail wooden structures of the ship._

_Crona, protected by Ragnarok's soul wavelength and the black blood in his veins, used up the last of his magic and lost consciousness. His final thought as the darkness rushed up to claim him was one of wordless triumph._

* * *

_Kid's reflexes only just saved him._

_As the plasma erupted above him he had barely enough time to react, throwing himself off the deck of the ship and into the sea. He sank below the waves of the freezing Baltic Sea just ahead of the shockwave of the boy's explosion, which carried right on through the water and thudded into him. He heard the _crack_ as his ribcage splintered. Above him, he could see the hull of the Nidhogg silhouetted against a burst of light so bright he could hardly look at it. As he watched, the dark shape was eaten away by the light. The water around him started to boil._

_When he surfaced, gasping desperately for air, singed, ragged and broken, the ship was gone. Only some burned flotsam remained, along with a blackened hunk of what looked like meat. Kid suspected that was all that was left of the poltergeist. He hauled himself onto a floating plank, Liz and Patti transforming back into human form and collapsing onto two more pieces of wreckage._

_Above him, he could see a black winged shape spiralling through the sky. If he looked closely he could see the sword, its meister once more buckled to it with those strange black straps. The boy seemed to be out cold, being ferried away by his weapon to God-knew-where._

I have… to stop…_ Kid though, before he too blacked out._

* * *

Once again, Kid had to stop himself reliving the events and concentrate on the meeting. Stein and Death were still discussing this possible connection with the witches. His father had produced a list from somewhere and was running through it, reading off names. After a moment, Kid realised that this must be a list of informants the DWMA had inside the witches' coven. The idea shocked him slightly, although he supposed it made sense for them to have their spies.

_And do the witches have a similar list? _he wondered.

When the meeting was at long last over, he walked Maka over to the dispensary to meet Soul. It turned out that Dr Medusa had given him a clean bill of health, along with a bottle of herbal pills that she insisted would be better at dealing with any latent pain that paracetamol. Kid made a mental note to talk to Professor Stein about the school nurse's apparent love of herbal medicine.

Much later, in the dead of night, with the moon staring blankly down at him and the stars sparkling in the sky, he remembered that horrid, creeping madness that had tried to settle within him as he stood next to the kishin on the Nidhogg.

Something told him he had not seen the last of it.

* * *

_Author's note: I got a bit bored writing the second half of the 'battle of the church' – it really was turning into more of the same – so I had a go with this instead. I might go back and add that in later, but for now I'm leaving it be. The next chapter may have some explanation of Medusa's plans, or it may skip straight to a certain Founder's Day ball. I'll have to see how that pans out. As always, thanks for reading._


	7. Chapter 7

There are some scientists in the world that believe that theory is the be-all and end-all of research. If the numbers add up and agree on a piece of paper, then they are quite happy to declare their pet theory a fact and go about their day. They would not dream of donning a lab coat, walking into a laboratory and testing their ideas in the messy, uncertain place that is the real world.

Medusa had nothing but contempt for those scientists, if they were even allowed to call themselves that. For her, experiment was the foundation upon which all of science was based. After all, no matter how nice the equations may look, if they don't work in reality then they're nothing but wasted ink.

Not to mention that experiments could be highly rewarding as well.

She stood over her latest experimental subject and observed it with a cold, appraising stare. It was strapped down to an operating table, illuminated by the icy white glare of strategically placed halogen lamps. A small tray of surgical tools stood to one side and she walked over to it, running her hand over the scalpels and forceps like a pianist might caress the piano keyboard before beginning a concerto. She selected a small scalpel, its curved blade gleaming eagerly in the harsh light, picked it up and walked back to the operating table.

She held the blade in front of the subject's face, allowing it to see its reflection in the stainless steel with its one remaining eye. At the sight of it, the subject began to make muffled noises and move against its restraints. Medusa paid it no heed – those straps, fashioned from her own vectors, could restrain oxen. The weak thing under her blade had about as much chance of escape as it did of survival.

At a whispered command the vector around its neck (or what was left of its neck) tightened and the subjects muffled screams turned to muffled choking. When she was satisfied that it would not make any more annoying sounds she reached into the pocket of her lab coat and thumbed on a small recording device. Speaking into a microphone clipped to her lapel, she began to dictate notes.

"Vivisection today of test subject 31. Subject is human weapon, male, approximately sixty years of age. Weapon form is that of a ballista, of seemingly Ancient Roman design. Subject underwent locking procedure thirty-six hours before current time. Procedure was considered…"

She looked down at the ruin she had strapped to the operating table, trying to come up with a word that would encompass what had happened to it. The right side of the subject's body was still in its human form. Pale, wrinkled skin still twitched and moved with the action of blood in withered veins. Its chest still rose and fell as one lung continued to inflate and deflate with a ragged wheezing noise. A hand, old and withered and reminding Medusa of a bird's claw, clutched spasmodically at nothing. One eye, slightly clouded with cataracts but functional nonetheless, stared wildly.

But if she switched her gaze to her right, across to the subject's left side, she saw a nightmare tangle of twisted wooden beams and broken twine. It looked like a marionette that had been fed into an industrial shredder. Broken spars and slats jutted out like splintered bones. Gears gnashed at thin air as it tried to move its left half. Half of its skull had been replaced with an empty scaffold of wood and high-tension wires. The thin creak of wood echoed around Medusa's laboratory, along with the wheezing sound as the thing tried to suck in air down its ruined, half-wooden windpipe.

"…considered a failure," she finished.

Really, what else could you call it? This was far from the first time she had attempted to lock a weapon in its weapon form, and each subject seemed to come back more deformed than the last. It was proving to be a much more complex endeavour than she had ever suspected, even with the writings and technical drawings of Eibon himself to guide her.

But there was no such thing as a useless experiment and even though the results she had been hoping for still eluded her, she was not about to let a test subject go to waste. And so she began her vivisection, starting with the ragged and splintered interface between old flesh and broken wood. Her running commentary into the recorder provided a nice way to focus her thoughts, and helped to drown out the breathy wails of the subject.

"Making a small incision around the right orbit…"

"…removed for further analysis…"

"…interface proceeds down the heart, moving between right atrium and coronary artery."

"Left arm completely replaced, no overall structure noticeable. Some flesh remains on remains of left had, no apparent connection to rest of body."

"No sensory response from left half of cranium, state of neurological functionality remains unclear…"

Eventually the subject stopped making noises, slowly running out of both air and blood. She continued her work, reminding herself here and there of possible new avenues for research as she came across various structures and inconsistencies in the body. Finally, when she was done, she set her scalpel down and headed over to the sink. Scrubbing her hands clean, she pondered how to best carry out the second experiment she had planned for the day.

Reaching a decision, she turned and tended to the slowly-cooling corpse some more. Then she walked over to the door of her laboratory and pushed it open. She looked down at the young boy sat next to the door, on a plush chair such as you might find in a doctor's waiting room.

"You can come in now, Crona," she smiled.

* * *

Crona had to force himself to walk into the laboratory. He had been sat outside the door for almost two hours, listening to what had been going on inside. He had heard the cries of the 'subject', heard the calm and dispassionate voice of his mother (_no, of Lady Medusa_) as she butchered an old man on a cold steel operating table. He was used to violence, yes, but this seemed like too much.

But it was not his job to question her methods, or motives. His was to do what she said, right? And so he steeled himself and followed her back into the lab, wincing only slightly at the stench of blood and cleaning fluids that washed over him as he crossed the threshold.

Medusa walked back over to the sink and carried on washing her hands. Crona forced himself to look at the body on the table – or at least at the mish-mash of wood and skin that he assumed was the body, and not some grisly puppet. _See, it's not so bad_, he desperately told himself. _Just an old man. Some weak old man with no future and no purpose. But Lady Medusa gave him a purpose, didn't she? Gave his death meaning. It's fine, really. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all._

"Was… was the experiment successful?" he asked, in a small voice.

"No," she replied bluntly, still scrubbing her hands. "Not at all. Now be a dear and get rid of the body, would you, Crona?"

Crona swallowed and walked over to the table. Now he looked, he could see that it was on wheels to allow easier transportation. _What am I meant to do with it?_ he wondered.

"The incinerator, Crona," Medusa said.

Crona wondered for a second if she could read his mind, but kept that question to himself. He laid his hands on a handle at the head of the table, getting ready to turn it and push it out of the doors, when everything suddenly seemed to happen at once.

The man wasn't as dead as he had thought. His one eye snapped open and glared into Crona's own. His mouth flopped open and he took a deep, rattling breath. Jerking upright, he rolled off of the table and onto the floor with a resounding crash.

At the noise Medusa started to turn around, but the man was tremendously fast considering his ruined body. Crona watched in horror as he sprang to his feet and bore down on Lady Medusa, drawing back one sharp, splintered arm in obvious preparation to attack her with it. Time seemed to be passing at a crawl. Crona could see Medusa still turning, a slightly confused expression just starting to form on her face. He panicked, throwing out his arm and ordering the black blood into the form of a blade. He started to ready his magic as well.

_Let her die._

The thought came out of nowhere, bursting into his mind and taking root. _She is evil and you _know_ it. She wants to kill everyone, destroy everything. You know what she will use this research for if she succeeds, even if you pretend you don't. She treats you like garbage – you! Her own son!_

Crona hesitated. He knew that he should be vaulting over the table now, dispersing the man's probability of hitting his mother, cutting him down with his black blood. He should be protecting her, like the good boy he strove to be. And yet…

_She took everything from you, made you a slave._

The man's jagged, ruined arm started to swing down, straight for Medusa's head and a killing blow.

_Let her die. _

Medusa finished turning around, her eyes going wide in shock as she saw her test subject bearing down upon her.

_She deserves it._

The man's arm came down, whistling through the air, and shattered itself upon a sheet of hardened blood that was not there half a second ago. Crona, suddenly at his mother's side, punched the man square in the face and he collapsed onto his back with a clatter of falling wood. Crona lifted his foot and stamped down hard on the man's head, putting the weight of hundreds of himself behind it.

There was crunch, a splash of red, and the man went still.

And then it was all over.

* * *

After she had consoled Crona, hugged him and told him everything was all right and sent him from the room with the promise of his favourite food for dinner that night, Medusa looked down at the crumpled body with a very cold expression.

She reached down and retrieved the snakes that had animated the subject's corpse. The results of her second experiment were more than clear.

Crona had _hesitated_.

He was supposed to fling himself between her and danger without thought, not stand around thinking about it. And worse, it wasn't even hesitation born of fear. That, at least, she might yet be able to understand.

No, this was hesitation born of disobedience.

She narrowed her eyes in thought. Clearly, Crona still needed some educating.

The corpse on the floor seemed to mock her with its ruined state, jeering at her inability to succeed in her research. _There is only one man who has succeeded in fully and permanently 'locking' a weapon, _she thought. _And he's not really a man any more._

It was time, she decided, for Plan B.

* * *

_Author's note: There comes a time when you realise that you just haven't written enough Medusa, especially after two chapters of 'X beats up Y for a bit'. I hope I've got her characterisation right – she's probably one of the harder characters to write in Soul Eater. My thanks to everyone who has reviewed this fanfic so far: I do very much appreciate your comments. Until the next chapter, my thanks once again for reading._


	8. Chapter 8

Considering he was the god of death and order, Medusa wasn't surprised that Lord Death's parties were remarkably boring.

To be fair, she hadn't expected much. After all, when half of the people attending were under the age of fifteen there was only so much you could do. But even so: a free buffet, formal dress and one of the dreariest bands she had ever heard in her life? Tedious. Even the dancers seemed content to just shuffle from side to side for a little while.

The conversations with the other members of staff had been equally deplorable, so after the bare minimum of time spent talking to them she made her excuses and retreated to the furthest corner of the room, nursing a flute of champagne and planning the night's real entertainment.

Because tonight was the night, if everything went according to plan, that Death City was going to burn to the ground.

_Eruka. Report._

"_We've entered Death City. Your orders?"_

_Wait at the designated spot for the signal. Have you obtained the assistance we need?_

"_It's all set. Crona and Ragnarok are bringing them here shortly."_

Medusa glanced around her, noting the locations of various members of the DWMA. Spirit Albarn and his daughter, dancing awkwardly off to her left. Maka's partner Soul nowhere to be seen. Black Star and Tsubaki over by the buffet. Death the Kid and his weapon pair performing some kind of bizarre dance routine. Death himself by the main stage, holding an animated conversation with a small group of students. Professor Stein hogging the drinks table. None of them would be able to stop her leave, or even notice her go if she did it properly.

_And the attaché case?_

"_With me."_

_Excellent._

"Well, hello there, Dr Medusa! You're having fun, I hope?"

_Oh God no._

Like an inebriated horseman of her own personal apocalypse, Professor Stein appeared out of nowhere and tottered towards her. He carried with him a champagne glass filled to the brim and a smell that suggested many more champagne glasses before that one.

"Oh, hello Professor Stein," she said, trying to give the strongest impression she could that _now was not the time_. "I didn't see you there. Always sneaking up on me!"

Stein just laughed and downed his champagne with a motion that made it look as if he was trying to throw it over his shoulder but had mysteriously hit his mouth instead. Medusa studied him as best she could, trying desperately to work out what the man was playing at.

"Oh my. Are you all right?"

Stein supressed a hiccup just badly enough to draw attention to it. "I think I've had a bit too much champagne!" he giggled. "Stuff goes straight to my head…"

_Is he faking it? I can't tell…_

"Hey! How about a dance?" he asked cheerfully.

"Wha-"

Before she could react his arm was suddenly around her shoulders and she was being led onto the dance floor, leaving a trail of plaintive objections and turned heads behind her.

* * *

If it wasn't for the thoughts of the kishin's imminent revival keeping her calm and collected, Medusa would have been hard pressed not to gut Stein there and then and to hell with the consequences. The dancing was every bit as painfully dull as it had looked, the music was especially bad now she actually had to listen to it, and she had the added complication of a drunken Stein as her dancing partner.

That said, the man suddenly seemed to have a fair bit more co-ordination than he did a few minutes ago.

They'd been dancing in utter silence for about five minutes – just long enough for Medusa to start scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel for excuses to get out of this – when Stein spoke up.

"Professor Sid hasn't showed up for quite a while now, has he? You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

_Maybe his legs rotted off_, she wanted to say. "I'm afraid I don't know anything that might help you," was what she came out with. "I do hope he's okay, though."

"Hmm. If I remember right, last time I saw him he was going to investigate a laboratory somewhere. Now, whose laboratory was it again…?"

Medusa suddenly wondered if this was how a bird felt when it was being toyed with by a cat.

"Oh that's right. It was _your_ laboratory, Dr Medusa, wasn't it?"

_Act natural, you might still be able to talk your way out of this._

"Or should I call you witch Medusa?"

Medusa laughed, a thin, slightly brittle laugh. "I have absolutely no idea what you're on about, Professor. You really _are_ quite drunk, aren't you? Would you like me to get you a glass of water?"

"I can do without, thank you. I wasn't actually drunk at all."

Medusa winced. Stein smiled down at her with a predatory grin.

"You can drop the charade now, Medusa. I'd be interested to know why a witch like yourself infiltrated the DWMA. My guess would be that it had something to do with the kishin. Am I correct?"

Medusa glared at him. "If it weren't for Lord Death, you'd be dead now."

"I'll take that as a yes. So what do you want to do with it? Free it? Study it? Take its power for yourself? And while I'm at it, how do the black blood and that wizard boy tie into all this, hmm?"

The dancing, the party, even her allies taking up their positions around the city was all forgotten. _I must survive the next few minutes. By the way he's talking, it sounds like he hasn't informed anyone else of his suspicions. I need to keep him talking. I need to keep him interested._

"Take its power? What do you take me for, some bloodthirsty, mindless monster bent on destruction? You'd like that, wouldn't you – it would mean you could fight me without a qualm. But I'm a scientist. Just like you. And if my research is to prove fruitful then I need access to that kishin, access Lord Death wouldn't give to anyone, let alone a witch. To me, it's nothing but another test subject with some rather…useful side-effects."

Stein's hand on her back seemed to grip her slightly tighter. Maybe he was trying to prevent her escaping. Or maybe not…

"Think about it," she went on. "Lord Death tells us that the kishin's power surpasses mortal understanding. But have you ever wondered whether that's true, Stein? Have you ever wondered what we could find out from that thing Death keeps jealously locked away? What it would be like to take a scalpel to it and _learn_? The DWMA wants to act as a check against power, against change and evolution. But do you want to live in such a world? A stagnant place, where everything is predictable and nothing is new? Science, discovery, those words would be meaningless in the world Death wants to build – and which he has _you_ building."

Stein tilted his head ever so slightly. He looked like a man who has heard too much and yet wants to hear so much more. Medusa began to wonder – could he actually be _useful_?

She was not a gambler, but maybe it was time to go for broke.

"So," she whispered, leaning in very close to him (and did he lean in a little as well?), "why don't you join me?"

She heard his sudden intake of breath, felt his shoulder tense under her palm. She pulled back, locking eyes with him, head on one side and an expression that asked him "what do you say?"

And she could tell that some part of him wanted to do just that, to cast off Death's chains and join her, to remake the whole world.

It was all she needed.

"_Stein!_"

_That damn zombie again?_ Stein flung her aside, all thoughts of a brave new world forgotten as he rushed over to the door where Sid had appeared. The dead man was clearly worse for wear, limping and clutching his side. Medusa knew without even listening what he was probably telling Stein. _Time to call it a day here_.

A short sprint, a vault over the railing and she was outside, Stein's cry of rage echoing behind her. With her trusty snake-construct beneath her feet she shot up into the sky over Death City, noting with satisfaction the cloaked shapes of Eruka and Free perched on nearby spires.

Calculation spells, spatial magic: it was actually quite amazing how little time it took to render the great Lord Death absolutely impotent. As the residue from the Independent Cube washed over the landscape and Crona led the Mizune family through the sky, Medusa looked around in triumph.

_I _will _revive the kishin._

* * *

_Author's note: a bit of a weak ending there, and I apologise for that. If the last few chapters were where this story intersected with the canon, from the next one onwards will be where it deviates. Said next chapter will be predominantly set in Crona's mental world, and so will probably take me a little longer to write. In the meantime, though, thanks as always for reading._


End file.
